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GWB panel co-chairs spar on Sunday TV with report's author, Giuliani

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Assemblyman John Wisniewski (D-MIddlesex) and state Sen. Loretta Weinberg (D-Bergen), who co-chair a legislative panel looking into September's GWB lane closures, both appeared on Sunday morning political talk shows expressing skepticism over a report released Sunday regarding the lane closures and other matters. The report's main author, Randy Mastro, and Rudolph Giuliani appeared opposite the lawmakers to defend the report.
(Tony Kurdzuk/The Star-Ledger )

Democrats’ battle to challenge a report commissioned by Gov. Chris Christie on September’s George Washington Bridge lane closures took to the airwaves Sunday, when the co-chairs of a legislative panel looking into the matter squared off against the report’s chief author and one of Christie’s best-known allies.

State Assemblyman John Wisniewski (D-Middlesex) and state Sen. Loretta Weinberg (D-Bergen) went on the offensive Sunday morning, reiterating that the $1 million-plus report was a taxpayer-funded whitewash that, contrary to author Randy Mastro’s conclusion, did not prove the governor had no advance knowledge of the closures.

"This report rushes a judgment that was too early to make," Wisniewski said on ABC’s "This Week with George Stephanopoulos," appearing opposite Mastro.

WEINBERG'S OFFER

A half-hour later, on NBC’s "Meet the Press," Weinberg laid down a challenge to Christie: Testify under oath before her committee and turn over a list of witnesses interviewed for Thursday’s report, along with their interview transcripts, and she would accept that the governor truly did want to get to the bottom of Bridgegate and related scandals.

"If Gov. Christie comes before our committee, under oath, and brings all these documents with him, I will be more than satisfied," Weinberg said.

Asked whether Christie’s testimony would end the committee’s investigation, Weinberg said, "It would depend on what we heard from the governor, and if that would lead us anywhere else."

Christie’s spokesmen did not respond to requests for comment.

A separate investigation is being conducted by New Jersey’s top federal prosecutor, U.S. Attorney Paul Fishman.

Mastro’s firm — Gibson, Dunn & Crutcher — was retained by the governor’s office to conduct an internal review of the lane closures and related matters. Reactions to the report have been largely along partisan lines, seen either as a vindication of the governor or as a biased, deliberately ambiguous document that proves nothing.

Weinberg’s foil on "Meet the Press" was former New York City Mayor Rudolph Giuliani, a Republican and close ally of the governor. Giuliani was Mastro’s boss in the U.S. Attorney’s Office in Manhattan and at City Hall, where Mastro served as a deputy mayor.

SOME VOICES NOT HEARD

Giuliani offered a qualified embrace of the report, acknowledging that several key players were not interviewed, including former Christie aides Bridget Anne Kelly and Bill Stepien, and former Port Authority officials David Samson, David Wildstein and Bill Baroni.

"I would not accept it as a complete investigation," Giuliani said, but noted, "It gives you a tremendous amount of information. So far, no one has gotten to interview those people, including the joint committee. So this report has gone as far as anybody can go."

Responding to Wisniewski on "This Week," Mastro defended the report’s thoroughness and its main conclusion.

"We looked at over 250,000 pages of documents, interviewed more than 70 witnesses, and, as Mr. Wisniewski just admitted, we haven’t seen a shred of evidence that the governor knew anything about this lane realignment decision beforehand," Mastro said. "If it were there, in the hard evidence, we would have seen it."

"We haven’t had a chance to talk to some of the key players, as this report has not, either: Bridget Kelly, who sent the email that said: ‘Time for (some) traffic (problems) in Fort Lee,’ We don’t know why she sent that. We don’t know who authorized her to send it. It’s hard to believe, understanding how this governor’s office works, that one morning she woke up and decided, ‘I think it’d be a great idea to close traffic.’ "